MEXICO: Thousands of Unpaid Teens Bag Groceries for Wal-Martby Joseph Contreras, NewsweekAugust 1st, 2007Wal-Mart prides itself on cutting costs at home and abroad, and its Mexican operations are no exception. Wal-Mart is Mexico's largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico-and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits.

CHILE: Gold rush threatens glacierby Lucia Newman , Al JazeeraJuly 8th, 2007A new gold rush is under way as mining companies seek to supply the ever-increasing demand for the precious metal from emerging economies such as India, and with reserves dwindling all over the world they are going to extraordinary lengths to extract it.

PERU: ‘Voluntary Payment' Instead of Taxes for Mining Firms
by Milagros Salazar, Inter Press Service (IPS)August 25th, 2006Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo told Congress that private mining companies operating in Peru would make a "voluntary payment" of 757.5 million dollars over the next five years, to go towards fighting poverty. However, they will not pay the tax on windfall profits that new President Alan García had promised in his campaign.

THAILAND: Patent or patient? How Washington uses trade deals to protect drugsby Alan Beattie, Andrew Jack and Amy Kazmin, The Financial TimesAugust 22nd, 2006As the World Health Organisation's top man in Thailand, William Aldis knew Thai officials were hosting their US counterparts in the northern city of Chiang Mai to negotiate what to many outsiders might seem an entirely worthy objective: a bi­lateral free-trade deal. But he saw dangers - and decided to make his views public.

WORLD: Legalizing Human Trafficking
by Basav Sen, Dollars & SenseJune 28th, 2006The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), now being negotiated in the World Trade Organization (WTO), is likely to reduce migrant workers to the status of commodities.